A Daughter's Journey
by DrYuriMom
Summary: Throughout time, girls have known both hurt and Hurt. Temporary setbacks and transient defeats may respond to the kind words or embrace of a dear friend, but for those hurts that define us only hard work and an often painful voyage of self discovery will provide peace. Even when the friend is a Goddess of Hope, would magical girls really be any different? {A Mother's Journey story}


Throughout time, girls have known both hurt and Hurt. Temporary setbacks and transient defeats may be soothed by a friend's embrace, but for those Hurts that define us, only hard work and an often painful voyage of self discovery will provide peace. Even when the friend is a Goddess of Hope, would magical girls really be any different? {A _Mother's Journey_ story}

**A Daughter's Journey  
****Another Statistic**

_Sunday, May 1  
__(Four Hours Before Sagitta Luminis)  
__(Cosmos Ante Madoka)_

She felt sick.

Really sick.

_Where am I?_

She tried opening her eyes and immediately regretted it as she fought down heaves.

Any kind of movement seemed a bad idea right now.

The world around her was a blur, so she gave up trying to see it and closed her eyes again. Her mouth felt dry and rough, like it was filled with unrefined cotton. Her head was spinning and the only thing real was the rapidly advancing contents of her stomach.

She twisted herself so she could push her head up from the soft, yielding surface she had been laying against. The movement was the last straw for an angry digestive tract as it began spewing up everything that still filled it.

Most of what descended from her lips were the remains of food people had pushed on her all day long. Finger foods that sat in her belly like a rock the entire afternoon, right up until she now finally expelled the unwanted cuisine.

She had never liked the feeling of throwing up. She hated being out of control of her body, not to mention just the smell and the texture of what passed her mouth in reverse. She had friends in high school who had been bulimic. While she certainly appreciated their desire to control their appearance, she'd never understood their method. It seemed an odd way to manifest self-hate.

_Not that my solution was any better._

_(But wasn't the crimson beautiful?)_

A hypnotically sweet sing-song voice sounded in her head. A siren calling her mind to shoals she had long since thought left behind her, replaced by antacids and Prozac.

Her retching finally subsiding, she tried pushing her face up from the pool of vomit she had created beneath herself…and almost found herself falling back nose-first into the putrid liquid. With great effort she – slowly – managed to settle herself into an unsteady kneeling position. Only then did she try opening her eyes again.

This time things went a little better.

_It's my living room. How'd I get here?_

She looked around at the familiar space, softly illuminated with the muted LED lighting programmed to create a gentle glow at night when only sleeping occupants were in the room. She noted through the window that it was now quite dark. Just as she couldn't remember how she had gotten here, she had no idea what time it was, or even what day.

Then her eyes came to rest on the half-empty bottle of Absolut 100 on the coffee table next to her and it all came rushing back.

She bent over onto her hands again as her belly suddenly dredged up more to empty.

_Sayaka._

_Oh my God, Sayaka._

The grief that had ruled her since the body had been discovered, strangely serene in an upscale hotel room downtown, returned with the memories that flooded her mind.

_(You failed her)_

The sweet voice in her head was cheerful as it reminded her.

_I did. _

_It was all my fault._

_(You weren't there when she needed you.)_

_I wasn't there for her. _

_Oh God, Sayaka!_

Where more tears came from was as much a mystery as the seemingly magically renewing bile that kept causing her to heave. She reached up a black clad arm to wipe her mouth, feeling thin strands sticking to her lips.

_Oh great, I've got puke all in my hair._

The practical thought acted like a splash of cold water, albeit perhaps just a few drops, but it was enough to break the cycle of nausea that had been commanding her.

She straightened back up, balancing her body as she sat on her legs and knees, before taking the next precarious step of pushing her body to an upright position.

She never quite got there, but she did manage to stumble over to the antique cherry wood and marble-topped coffee table and sit her bottom down on it. She used her hands on either side to steady herself lest she keel over again to the floor.

Looking back to where she had been laying for God knows how long, she recognised the soft surface she had been asleep against, and which now along with the floor was filled with the lumpy brown fluid that had been expelled from her belly.

A massive, royal blue, fuzzy beanbag chair. The kind you could easily lose two people in, maybe three if they were small and snuggly with each other.

Sayaka's beanbag. Her most special place in the house.

A place filled with happy memories.

She could remember countless times of Sayaka and Madoka, occasionally even Hitomi, snuggled together in the humongous chair under blankets together eating convenience store food (for the ambiance!) and watching movies and anime all night on the massive TV that was the Miki home's sleepover claim to fame.

_(You puked all over those memories just like you puked all over your daughter and her friends.)_

_I did. _

_Madoka and Hitomi were so damned forlorn at the funeral. I failed my daughter and I failed everyone that mattered to her._

_Oh God, Sayaka! I didn't mean to ignore you! You seemed so independent, so much more in control of your life than I ever was, even now much less when I was your age. I thought it was best to just stay out of your way._

_(What a pathetic parent.)_

The relentless voice remained cheerful as it reasoned for her.

Raising her hands to her face, she leaned over slightly and pressed her palms hard into her eye sockets. But the images wouldn't go away. She could still see everything that had once been hers.

And which now she had lost.

Forever.

_It hurts so much. I just want you to walk in the door after staying out too damn late again, that confident devil-may-care smile on your lips. We could finally talk. I swear I would be there for you this time!_

_But you won't._

_Because I killed you._

_I can't take this anymore!_

_(And?)_

_And? _

_(Oh come now, Miki Ai,) _the voice chided her, like an adult affectionately disappointed with a child unable to reason the next obvious step._ (Do you really need my help with this one?)_

Drooping, she reached over for the bottle of transparent liquid sitting beside her on the surface upon which she sat. Not even bothering with the tiny shot glass that sat next to it, she drew the glass neck to her lips and took a deep swig of the burning liquid. She could feel the warmth down her throat as the nectar that would help her forget the nightmare made its way down.

_(That's step one. Good girl! Now what comes next, Ai-chan?)_

Still grasping the bottle of vodka by the neck in her left hand, she pushed herself up from the table with her right and strove to steady herself. She was clueless how she managed it, but she did. With a small victory under her belt, she stumbled her way through the room, oblivious to what her bare feet were stepping in, and made her way slowly to the hobby room she and her daughter had made of the third room of the house after Sayaka's father had left them and took the contents of his home office with him.

_(You failed as much as a wife as you did a mother.)_

Guilt and despair stabbed into her with those unbidden words, threatening to knock her to the floor again. The power of the accusation had her clinging the doorway to get back her equilibrium. She took another long sip of vodka in an effort to avoid another bout of nausea. It was perhaps a useless gesture to drink fifty percent alcohol to avoid puking her guts up, but it seemed to work.

For now at least.

At the very least it helped her keep the painful memories at bay.

Then again…

The hobby room was filled with memories. Right after Tetsuya left, the two women left behind had found solace together in quilting and, strangely enough according to Madoka and Hitomi, a figurine-based tabletop war game from Europe that pitted supernatural armies together. The two of them had spent countless hours bonding together with paints, painstakingly assembling and decorating their armies and then striving to best the other in simulated warfare.

Much of the room was dedicated to the pastime, save for Ai's sewing machine in one corner. The table used for gaming could second as a work surface for quilting, although the combat diorama now covering it had not been displaced in a year.

It perhaps wasn't a stereotypically feminine past time, but it fit them.

Sayaka's army consisted of human knights – noble, honorable, and just…at least within their own code. Her mother played a dark fey army, filled with deceit and black magic and led by a stunningly beautiful elven sorceress Ai had spent days crafting during a rare week off from work.

_{You won in the end, didn't you, Miki Ai?)_ the voice helpfully pointed out. _(You vanquished your noble foe, dark sorceress.)_

"I can't take this anymore. Please, God, make it stop!" For the first time since awaking on the beanbag, she cried out aloud in her anguish. It came out almost as a croak after so many days of tears – harsh in her ears.

In startlement, she had almost dropped the bottle in her hand. Thus reminded of it, she brought the precious decanter of elixir up against her chest, unconsciously cradling it like an infant, being sure to keep the neck supported and tilted up.

_(God can't help you, Ai-chan. But you can. You can make it stop. Make it all go away.)_

Nodding in response to the words she moved forward again to the painting table she and her daughter hadn't sat at in four months, since Christmas when the two of them had made a point of spending the day together – just the two of them and their special past time.

Sayaka had kicked her butt from here to Avalon that day.

Poignant with loss, the happy memory felt now like yet another sword to her gut.

Mother and daughter and barely seen each other since that day...until that moment two days ago when she was called to the morgue by the city coroner to confirm a young cadaver as that of Miki Sayaka.

When she had been forced to identify her daughter's dead body by looking into her ashen and lifeless face.

She lifted the Absolut again to her lips and took another long sip of the pure water of the River Lethe. She then returned the container to its embrace as she reached out to the table with her right hand for the new object of her current desire. She marveled at the aluminum and steel implement, finding hypnotic both it and the memories it brought within her of releases so long ago.

_(You can stop the pain, Ai-chan. Won't it be wonderful to see the crimson again?)_

_It's been so long. Whoever heard of someone my age doing this? I don't know if I still can…_

_(It's the only way you can give Sayaka justice after vanquishing her. It's the only fitting end for you now.)_

Grasping the long object tightly in her right fist, she again slowly made her way down the hallway; much of it leaned up against the wall with her right shoulder trailing along the surface for support. Lights came on wherever she went in the nature of her modern Mitakihara condominium, fading off again once she had passed – a nod to energy efficiency. She paid none of it any mind as she focused like a laser on reaching her bed.

Something caused her to stop before she could turn into her own room. The closed door to Sayaka's bedroom mocked her.

_(Sayaka nursed wounds in there you were too busy to notice. Wounds you allowed to take hold and fester because you cared more for work, more for finding a boyfriend, than you did for your own daughter.)_

_I should have been there for her. I was such a fool. I didn't see her pain. Now all I can offer her is my own pain in the hopes it can give her some peace._

_(It's justice,)_ the smug voice in her mind concluded for her.

_It's justice_, she agreed as she crossed the hall and opened the door slowly, passing into the smaller bedroom that had once housed her little girl.

Only the desk lamp lit up at her entrance, which was how Sayaka had programmed her room to work after eleven PM and before seven AM. A look at the child's desk and she finally knew what time it was.

5:47 A.M.

_I got home from the cremation at about seven o'clock and started on this bottle a few hours after that when I couldn't take it anymore. I have no idea how long I was drinking. I must have been out at least four hours._

_It doesn't feel like it._

Not bothering to close the door to the hallway given there was zero chance of her being disturbed now that Sayaka was dead, she made her way to the bed upon which her daughter must have tormented herself with her thoughts.

_I should have known she was hurting. She's my daughter. _

_She just seemed so strong._

Leaning against the bed, she downed another long swig of vodka before carefully setting the bottle atop the nearby nightstand. She then considered the other object she had brought with her into the room.

_I wonder if Sayaka cut, too? We never talked about it, and I didn't think to ask the coroner before they incinerated the body._

_(You never really knew your daughter. How can you call yourself a mother?)_

_I can't_, she realized as she undressed herself.

It took a while to escape her clothes as she had to fumble with buttons and fasteners in her inebriated state, but eventually she managed it. Clad now only in her panties, she collapsed on her side into her daughter's bed. She turned herself over and lay staring at the ceiling illuminated indirectly by the desk lamp which was pointed down at Sayaka's desk.

Idly she found her free hand wandering her body, moving down eventually to stroke her inner thighs. The action wasn't an effort to bring forth pleasure that would be expected by others from such movement in a still nubile woman, the efforts that come from passion, but rather it allowed her to finger the rigid lines that crisscrossed the smooth skin near where her thighs joined.

Lines she had placed there herself thirty years ago when she had been Sayaka's age.

_(The release is still there, you just have to grasp and claim it.)_

Tightening her grip again on the object still in her right hand, she slid herself up the bed so that she was propped up by pillows. An insignificant part of her worried about the blood that would soon cover the sheets and doubtless seep into the mattress, but she was past caring.

_(Bring forth the exquisite crimson, Ai-chan. It's been so long, but your childhood friend has always been there patiently waiting for you. She's all you have left and will rush to embrace you if you bring her forth.)_

Despondent now in grief, loss, and guilt, Miki Ai brought up the fresh, sharp Xacto blade to her face and stared at the keen edge, fascinated. She pressed a fingertip to the cutting surface, swallowing her saliva hungrily as she watched the toughened skin crease in a line, leaving a thin thread of red behind as she lifted the pad of that digit back off the metal. It had been so long and she yearned for the release about to come.

_Let's make it all disappear._

Not caring now about disfiguration, she brought up her left forearm and ran the tip of the blade across the expanse of skin only centimeters away from her nose. She moaned as crimson liquid welled up along the line in bubbly droplets. Her right hand was shaking in anticipation more than pain as it made its way down the other arm, and so the line bled unevenly.

Having traversed perhaps twelve centimeters with the blade, she stopped and extended her right index finger. With the tip, she ran along the line, sweeping up the liquid as she went. With her now wet fingertip she traced out the kanji for her given name on her left wrist.

_Ai. It means love_, she mused. _My name. What a joke…_

_(Harder, Ai-chan! Carve your masterpiece in your own flesh! Wash away the pain with a river of glorious crimson. It's the only way to atone for your sins. To atone for all the love you've betrayed.)_

Nodding, Ai did as the thoughts commanded. She grasped the knife tightly in her fist and sank the blade all the way to the hub in her upper arm and pulled.

She gasped in pain-ecstasy as the edge cut through the deep bicep muscle.

_(Crimson!)_

_Crimson!_

Two voices sang in her mind to a crescendo as thoughts of failed career, failed marriage, failed parent…and her failure to her only child…were washed out in a gushing stream of velvety red. She drank in the agony as she watched the fluid drain down her arm and into her armpit. The brilliant color ebbed and flowed with the beat of her heart.

_It's so God-damned beautiful_! she marveled. _How did I go thirty years without this?_

_(It's better than sex!)_

_Yeah, better than Tetsuya ever made me feel,_ she agreed bitterly.

But then another thought came upon her, threatening to bring the grief back along with the memories. She whimpered more from the recollections than the pain from her arm.

_But not as good as painting figures and sewing quilts with Sayaka._

_(Make the pain stop, Ai-chan! Keep cutting!)_

She had withdrawn the blade and her grasp on the handle now resting with her right hand on her tummy was loose. She had never thought to keep going after this, having already cut deeper than ever before, but the demanding voice in her mind would brook no arguments.

_And it feels sooooo good to have pain I can see and that makes sense. Not like the pain in my heart…_

Tightening her grip again on the knife, she pushed herself further up against the pillows so she could better see her legs. Despite, or perhaps because of, the pain in her left arm, she moved her left hand to run her fingers along the blemished skin on her inner thigh.

She shivered as she felt fire rising within her, fire she hadn't felt since the early days with her ex-husband. Her hand followed the crest of her tendon up to the folds of her womanhood. Soft waves of pleasure rose in time with the tensing of her feminine muscles, pleasure that danced with the agony in her arm.

It'd been years since she'd been so wet.

_(Now, Ai-chan!)_

She closed her eyes.

Even as her left hand was stroking the slick surface between her nether lips, her right came down hard against the inside of her left leg.

She could feel pain once again shoot through her body, but now more than ever it was almost orgasmic in the sense of release it brought. There was no more guilt. No more regret. No more grief. No more fear. There was just her body and the exhilarating sensations washing over her mind, blotting out everything else.

_I hate myself._

_And it's okay._

_(Good girl. You're finally getting it. Now pull!)_

And she did, drawing the keen blade plunged deep in her thigh through her flesh. She cried out as the agony overwhelmed her, but she never stopped pulling until she passed out.

When she came back to herself, she felt something new as warmth was shooting into her hand. She flexed her fingers, feeling stickiness between them.

_(You did it, Ai-chan! I'm so proud of you!)_

The stickiness didn't stop flowing even as she released the knife which fell loosely to the bed. Her intoxicated mind felt increasingly floaty.

She opened her eyes and knew she must be hallucinating, whether from the vodka or the blood loss she couldn't be sure. Strange creatures danced around her. Not far away she could swear she saw the Arc de Triomphe despite never having been to Paris. It was like she was in a cartoon world.

_I'm dying, aren't I? _that rational part of her mind concluded_. I'm bleeding out from the femoral artery._

_(It's what you wanted, isn't it dark sorceress? What you deserve for ruining the lives around you. The only justice for killing your baby girl.)_

Miki Ai felt herself fading. She closed her eyes again, unable to process any more her bizarre surroundings.

_I'm sorry Sayaka. I only hope you can forgive me. I never meant for this to happen, my daughter. I did the best I could, but in the end I was stupid._

_So stupid._

**/*/**

Izabel watched as the woman's consciousness left her for the last time, her life's blood still pouring out of her body.

Her delicious despair fading along with her life.

Wandering from the now still form, she glanced over the painstakingly decorated lead and plastic figurines she had drawn into her maze along with the woman.

_(The work of hacks_,) she thought as she idly examined the artistic fruit of countless dozens of hours by a mother and her daughter, now both gone from the world. (_Of course I could do _much_ better.)_

_(But alas there is no time for that. The festival is to start shortly and I must look my best! )_

_(We can't have a party without a queen, now can we?)_

She turned to her precious Michaela. (_The woman is yours, dear one. I'm done with her. Now behave while I go share with my peers what true beauty is!)_

And with that, the Vain Witch went to join the others.

**/*/**

At 7:00 A.M. a clock radio turned itself on in an empty room.

"This is a public service announcement for Mitakihara City. Starting at 7:00 this morning an evacuation order is in effect due to extreme weather conditions. All residents must evacuate immediately to the nearest shelter."

*****PGBR*****

_Saturday, May 21  
__(a little over three weeks after Sagitta Luminis)  
__(Cosmos Secundum ad Madoka)_

"…so Miki-san steals my math notes but I didn't realize it until after school. I know how lazy she is about note taking, so I never had any doubt she was the one who did it. So here I am running from the school like a crazy woman to intercept my friend and demand she give back my ill gotten notes. But what do I find? Miki-san and Akemi-san sitting under a tree beside the pathway across from the school going over formulas that Akemi-san here had missed because she's been so sick the past year."

Sayaka sat back with tears in her eyes and a warm tea cup cradled pleasantly in her hands as she took in the scene playing out before her. After bloody scenes of death for the woman who had given her birth, she couldn't help but feel emotional release in the image of her mother, her father, her best friend, and the boy she loved…along with that freaky transfer student who had somehow changed everything…sitting and enjoying a pleasant meal together remembering the good times they had spent with the missing Miki Sayaka.

After watching her own funeral, this bittersweet wake left her feeling almost at peace with those she had left behind.

Almost.

"Couldn't you have somehow just left my body so they'd at least have closure?" she asked rhetorically, not really expecting an answer when it related to the details of how the powerful pink-haired kami across the table from her did what she did.

The blue-haired former puella magi had been unable to release the regrets that had come to define her each and every time she had contracted. Her now omnipresent best friend had offered, in an effort towards healing, to guide the hurting girl through the events after the swashbuckler's own demise.

Or more accurately, demises.

Like all the magical girls now saved from despair by Madoka, Sayaka had all her own memories from all the timelines that Homura had managed to bind together like a tangled ball of string. Timelines Madoka, through her wish, had managed to weave back into a cohesive whole – sans witches. There was only one Sayaka just as there was only one Anne Frank and one Cleopatra. Since joining Madoka, she remembered the events of the witch universes as clearly as she did the wraith one that came of Madoka's wish.

And as such, the tour had started with the events that followed her becoming a grief seed as reliably as her becoming a grief seed quickly followed every one of her contracts until the last one.

Watching the macabre demise of her mother in the last timeline at the hands of her own guilt – guilt fed by the witch of a girl Sayaka now considered a friend – had been hard. But the sliver of Madoka that was acting as her guide made it clear it was important for her to see all that in order to fully appreciate how proud the kami of magical girls was of her still hurting childhood friend's decision to let go of her regrets over Kamijou-kun and the green-haired girl who now held his heart.

"I didn't realize the notes weren't hers," Homura responded sheepishly to the others sitting at the table with her, "or else I don't think I would have been so open to her help. Still, I was so lost then despite all the tutors and all the studying I'd done in the hospital. She was there for me from day one. I honestly don't know what I would have done without her."

The raven-haired girl paused a moment as she took a sip of her water and then smiled in thought as she regarded the glass she held before her. "I swear, Sayaka saved my life."

"You got that right, transfer student!" Sayaka commented loudly to no one in particular given she knew full well that she was completely insubstantial. "Seven times in this timeline!"

"Um, I think it's five, Sayaka-chan," Madoka corrected with a smirk before taking another sip of tea from the service She had thought to place there for the two of them on the empty table She had selected to 'occupy'.

Sayaka opened her mouth to argue, then stopped and chuckled despite her still flowing tears as she noted the amused twinkle in the pink-haired girl's red eyes. Madoka was amazingly nice about it, but arguing with the girl over any point of fact had become kinda futile.

Facts were one thing, but feelings were something entirely different. Madoka didn't have such easy and certain answers for those, hence Sayaka's presence in Madoka's 'peanut gallery' for her mother's suicide upon her daughter's death in past timelines as well as her efforts to find her missing daughter in this one.

And to see the efforts of one amazing green-haired girl to save her depressed recovering-cutter of a mother from a fate that could still very easily come to pass despite the absence now of a predatory Izabel.

"And mine too, Akemi san," Hitomi added in response to Homura's statement about life-saving. "She never let my head get too big, and she was always there to remind me to stop and smell the roses between all my responsibilities. She's always been my very best friend, Miki-san," Hitomi finished as she turned to face Sayaka's mother and place a reassuring hand on the older woman's shoulder.

_Hitomi…_

Sayaka's hand went up to wipe another tear from her cheek.

"Did you…" Sayaka started to ask as she glanced back up at Madoka, but her friend, still dressed in Her school uniform, shook Her head. Madoka's gaze was focused on Hitomi as She spoke, Her soft smile never fading.

"No, Sayaka-chan. I had nothing to do with Hitomi's support of your Mom. She's not one of Mine. She was never meant to be a magical girl and only became one twice to bring you back from Oktavia. Since Oktavia never happened now, Hitomi was never a magical girl and therefore I have no connection to her. Homura will make sure she stays out of my domain now." Madoka's smile widened as She added, "I have faith in her."

"She's kinda scary about that, though," Sayaka admitted, thinking back to the mental debate between Homura and Kyouko after the press conference. "Would Homura really hurt Hitomi to stop her?"

Sayaka watched as Madoka's smile faded just slightly and a sad look appeared in Her eyes as She considered Homura interacting with the others. The blue-eyed girl quickly knew that this response was all she would get from her friend, but it was more than Madoka would ever show to anyone else.

_It must be lonely being a goddess_, she thought to herself for the umpteenth time. Sayaka knew full well now that as one of Hers, Madoka knew her thoughts. She watched Madoka just nod, once again the only response she was likely to get whenever the subject was the tormented transfer student or Madoka's feelings toward same.

"What about Kyouko?"

Madoka blinked and She turned Her head to regard Sayaka again, Her serene smile back again. "What about?" She asked pleasantly despite the fact She knew full well what would be said. Sayaka knew all that, but she appreciated Madoka allowing things to be normal between them where possible.

"Is she ever going to let go of her anger at Hitomi? I don't know how I'll handle standing by helplessly watching Kyouko hurt Hitomi knowing all this now."

"No, Sayaka," Madoka assured. "Hitomi will be fine. Kyouko is surrounded by good friends who will watch out for her, and more are on the way. Introductions will be a bit rough, though. Sayaka, do you remember Oriko?"

Sayaka thought back and shook her head before she felt a gentle nudge in her memories and an image of an elegant white-haired magical girl came to mind…and Madoka's bloody chest impaled by a shard of something sharp and hard.

"The psycho girl who killed you, Saotome-sensei, and half a dozen kids at school that one time?"

"She and another magical girl named Kirika. It is quite an exciting battle, actually. Not terribly far from Kyouko's family's church. Would you join me, Sayaka? I have to be there and I'd appreciate your company. This…wasn't an easy one."

Sayaka had already gotten over the chaotic use of tense Madoka now used. She'd been there, was there, and would be there. Obviously Sayaka, who still existed in linear time, was going to be as well, or else the request wouldn't have been made. Still, watching the sadness in Madoka's face, a sadness she wouldn't have thought possible in the girl now, she couldn't have refused regardless of the paradox implications.

"I thought you liked saving girls," Sayaka asked, confused. She had long since given up on trying to understand what passed through Madoka's thoughts at times like this, but wan anticipation was something she never expected to see again grace that face.

"I do, Sayaka-chan. But even I'm not all powerful," She said as She rose from the table and the tea service dissolved into nothingness before them. Her head shook sadly. "This will be the one that got away."

* * *

*****Author's Note*****

As noted in the description, this is a sister work to _A Mother's Journey_. It will follow the events in the companion story from the perspective of those girls who have already joined Madoka. It will give me a chance to share things not apparent to Fiona Graham and which also may be too…visceral…for a rated T work like _Mother's Journey_. Please be sure to follow _Mother's Journey_ if you like this story since it'll make a lot more sense after you do. _Daughter's Journey_ is not meant to stand alone separate from _Mother's Journey_.

For those who have read _Mother's Journey_, it should be apparent that the events Sayaka is viewing took place earlier "this evening" when Homura joined Hitomi, Kyosuke, and Sayaka's parents for dinner after the press conference. The battle Madoka is taking Sayaka to see is the same one Homura, Mami, and Kyouko are already heading towards. We'll circle back to Sayaka and Madoka once we follow the rest of the gang into the brewing fight just outside Kasamino City.

This was a very interesting chapter to write. For those who quibble over the Miki women's unusual (to some) pastime, I drew that from my wife and thirteen year old daughter. As far as the rest, keep in mind I practice psychiatry. I have a lot of material to draw from, and I'll be honest not all of it is from my patients.

As always, any feedback or comments are greatly appreciated.


End file.
